Even as the U.S. and its allies continued the scramble to evacuate citizens and their Afghan associates from Kabul, a confidential United Nations assessment is warning that the Taliban are intensifying efforts to hunt down Afghans who worked with American and NATO forces over the past two decades and that the militants have threatened to kill or arrest their family members if the people being sought cannot be found.
The sobering report circulating among U.N. officials this week became public Thursday as the Taliban‘s leaders sought to cement their rule by formally announcing the establishment of a new “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,” even as they faced persistent pockets of resistance and protests in Kabul and other Afghan cities.
Clashes and chaos continued Thursday around Kabul‘s only international airport, where Taliban fighters used gunfire at traffic choke points to halt throngs of Afghans desperately trying to access a U.S. military-led evacuation now in its fourth day.
Unease over the future of Afghanistan was further elevated by warnings from regional experts that the Taliban will almost certainly once again provide a safe haven for al Qaeda and other jihadist groups and that dire food shortages are likely to envelop Afghanistan during the coming months while the international community attempts to isolate the Taliban.
Republicans in Washington sharpened their criticism of the Biden administration on Thursday, with Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas leading the charge by asserting that Taliban “goons” are beating and stripping documents from people trying to escape via the airport, which remains in the control of U.S. military forces.
President Biden, facing growing criticism of how he handled the American withdrawal, has sent some 4,500 U.S. troops back to Afghanistan since the Taliban seized Kabul on Sunday to coordinate the evacuation mission. But the troops are behind a strict fence line at the airport and have no control of what is happening on the streets of the capitals just beyond the perimeter.
“It is total violent chaos outside of the airport, contrary to Joe Biden who is… claiming that the Taliban is cooperating with us,” Mr. Cotton said on Fox News Thursday. “My office has been in touch with dozens of people on the ground outside the airport where Taliban are beating people indiscriminately, taking their passports, taking their visa papers.”
“All of this is happening just a few yards away from the gates and American soldiers are not allowed to enter beyond that perimeter to try to secure American citizens who are making their way through these crowds of Taliban goons to get into the airport,” he said.
While Mr. Biden has said no Americans will be left behind in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin acknowledged to reporters Wednesday that troop levels deployed to operate the airport aren’t enough to forcefully go out and clear a path for U.S. citizens trying to access evacuation flights.
Others have blamed the current situation on the Biden administration’s mishandling of the U.S. troop withdrawal over recent weeks. President Biden, in an interview this week with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, downplayed problems with the withdrawal. He also claimed there was no way the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan could have been drawn down “without chaos ensuing.”
Sen. Ben Sasse, Nebraska Republican, responded with outrage on Thursday. “Mr. President, wake up and lead,” the senator said in a statement. “Naively hoping the Taliban gives Americans and our allies safe passage to Kabul’s airport is not a plan — it’s a hostage situation. We have better options. Give American troops the power to push back the airport perimeter and create safe, American-controlled corridors to the airport. We cannot wait for Americans to find their own way. Go get them. It’s the duty of the commander-in-chief.”
Messy dynamic
It’s a messy dynamic that now coincides with soaring doubts about the long-term intentions of the new Taliban leaders in Kabul, who have launched a major charm offensive to convince the international community that — unlike the last time they were in power prior to 2001— “amnesty” will be given to Afghans who previously worked against the Islamist militants and that women’s rights will be respected.
The U.N. document that became public Thursday sharply challenged the Taliban‘s public claims. The document was produced by the Norwegian Center for Global Analysis, a private intelligence firm that advises U.N. agencies. It was first reported on Thursday by The New York Times, but began circulating a day earlier among U.N. officials.
The confidential document reportedly cites reports of Taliban fighters going door to door and “arresting and/or threatening to kill or arrest family members of target individuals unless they surrender themselves to the Taliban.”
There remain widespread concerns in Washington and in the international community that the Taliban, which captured Kabul with almost no resistance from the U.S.- and NATO-trained Afghan security forces, will soon re-impose their harsh brand of Islamist rule over Afghanistan.
The analysis also cited reports that the Taliban had a list of people they wanted to question and punish — and their locations — and that the militant group’s search has included targeting crowds of Afghans outside the airport. Members of the Afghan military and the police, as well as people who worked for investigative units of the toppled government, were particularly at risk, the document warned.
The report reproduced a letter dated Aug. 16 from the Taliban to an unnamed counterterrorism official in Afghanistan who had worked with U.S. and British officials and then gone into hiding before the insurgents came to the official’s apartment. The letter, according to The Times, instructed the official to report to the Military and Intelligence Commission of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in Kabul. If not, it warned, the official’s family members “will be treated based on Shariah law.”
A haven for terrorists?
Husain Haqqani, the former Pakistani ambassador to the U.S. who heads the South and Central Asia program at the Hudson Institute in Washington, said Thursday that, despite previous assurances, there is little question the Taliban will also provide a safe haven in Afghanistan for the al Qaeda terror group in the days to come. Al Qaeda planned the 9/11 attacks from an Afghan sanctuary, prompting the 2001 U.S.-led invasion that ousted the first Taliban government.
While Taliban leaders vowed during negotiations with the Trump administration last year to no longer provide safe haven for Islamic extremists and terrorists if U.S. troops left Afghanistan, Mr. Haqqani told The Washington Times in an interview that the militants used “very precise” language when they made such assurances.
“They said things like, ‘We will not allow an attack on another country from our soil,’” Mr. Haqqani said. “That is not the same thing as saying that fellow Muslims who have conducted an attack in another country will not be allowed to have refuge with us. It’s a huge difference … in the argument.”
Mr. Haqqani added that that partisan U.S. bickering over who is to blame for the Taliban takeover is counterproductive, arguing the seeds for the current situation in Kabul were planted years ago.
“There are mistakes that were made in the last 20 days, there were mistakes that were made in the last two years and then there are mistakes that were made over 20 years,” the former ambassador said, asserting that U.S. officials have been publicly signaling their desire to get out of Afghanistan for well over a decade.
“How could you win a war, when for 16 of the 20 years you were discussing how to withdraw?” Mr. Haqqani said. “It signaled to your enemy that he just had to wait you out. It also created an inherent insecurity among your allies.”
Anti-Taliban protests spread
Tension between the Taliban and Afghan citizens continued to spiral on Thursday, with anti-Taliban protests growing for a second day and spread to the streets of Kabul for the first time since the militant group seized the country’s capital,
Crowds in Kabul gathered Thursday to celebrate the anniversary of the country’s independence from British control more than a century ago— celebrations that quickly turned into outbursts of defiance against the new Taliban rule.
Videos circulating online showed demonstrators in Kabul waving the Afghan national flag. The Associated Press reported that a procession of cars and people near Kabul’s airport carried long black, red and green banners in honor of the Afghan flag. There were also reports of protesters in other cities tearing down Taliban flags in some cities.
Taliban commanders have struggled to contain the protests, with reports of demonstrators killed in at least one city Thursday, although it was not clear if the deaths were a result of a crackdown by Taliban fighters or from a stampede caused by tense crowds.
Reuters reported that several people were killed in the city of Asadabad, the capital of the eastern province of Kunar. “Hundreds of people came out on the streets. … At first I was scared and didn’t want to go, but when I saw one of my neighbors joined in, I took out the flag I have at home,” Mohammed Salim, a witness in Asadabad, told the news service, adding that “several people were killed and injured in the stampede and firing by the Taliban.”
Fears are soaring that the group is preparing to bring back the hard-line Islamist government and theocratic police state it imposed on Afghans during its previous reign from 1996 to 2001 — a reign that ended when U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan.
The demonstrations were a remarkable show of defiance after the Taliban fighters violently dispersed a protest Wednesday. At that rally, in the eastern city of Jalalabad, demonstrators lowered the Taliban’s flag and replace it with Afghanistan’s tricolor. At least one person was killed.
Meanwhile, opposition figures gathering in the last area of the country not under Taliban rule talked of launching an armed resistance under the banner of the Northern Alliance, which provided key military support to the U.S. during the 2001 invasion.
The Taliban so far have offered no specifics on how they will lead, other than to say they will be guided by Shariah, or Islamic, law. They are in talks with senior officials of previous Afghan governments, but they face an increasingly precarious situation and a shortage of governmental management experience in their ranks.
“A humanitarian crisis of incredible proportions is unfolding before our eyes,” warned Mary Ellen McGroarty, the head of the U.N.’s World Food Program in Afghanistan.
Beyond the difficulties of bringing in food to the landlocked nation dependent on imports, she said that drought has claimed 40% of the country’s expected annual crop. Many who fled the Taliban advance now live in parks and open spaces in Kabul.
“This is really Afghanistan’s hour of greatest need, and we urge the international community to stand by the Afghan people at this time,” Ms. McGroarty said.
• Rowan Scarborough contributed to this article, which is based in part on wire service reports.